190 Accept Hamilton Standard Offer

Hamilton Standard of Windsor Locks said Friday that 190 of its salaried workers have accepted an early-retirement offer, the third buyout plan extended by the aerospace company during the past year.

Pete Kowalchuk, a Hamilton Standard spokesman, said the departures will leave the company with a work force of about 10,700 worldwide -- 9,300 of them in the United States and 8,700 in Connecticut.

Kowalchuk said the bulk of the early retirements came from veteran employees at company plants in Windsor Locks and Farmington.

"This gave us an opportunity to recognize employees who served the company well for years at the same time that we needed to make adjustments in headcounts for economic reasons," Kowalchuk said.

Those opting for Hamilton Standard's enhanced retirement program represented just less than half of the 400 employees eligible. The program was open to non-union workers at least 57 years old with at least five years' service with the company. The workers had to be on the company's payroll as of Nov. 1.

Kowalchuk said Hamilton Standard had expected 50 percent to 60 percent of the eligible employees to accept the offer. Those eligible included about 75 workers who had accepted a less generous buyout in August but were still on the payroll Nov. 1; to qualify, some of those employees had to return a lump-sum payout they had received in that program.

Salaried employees who had accepted a company buyout offer last February were not entitled to upgrade their benefits to the level offered in October, Kowalchuk said.

"It would be impossible to predict whether we would have the need for future programs of this kind," Kowalchuk said, citing the continuing uncertain economic conditions.

Hamilton Standard was the last major division of Hartford's United Technologies Corp. to report early-retirement numbers following a series of buyouts offered late last year.

In late December, Pratt & Whitney of East Hartford reported that 1,480 of its salaried workers were retiring, while UTC said 300 of its corporate staffers would retire.

In addition, 144 workers elected to take early retirement at the United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, 116 at

Norden Systems in Norwalk, and 278 at Pratt affiliates in Alabama and California.